“You called me soft, Adrian,” Lena said. She didn’t whisper. She pitched her voice so that it carried perfectly across the silent, echoing marble foyer, ensuring Victor and his security team heard every single word.
“You and your mother called me the ‘charity bride.’ You assumed that because I was quiet, I was a victim,” Lena continued, stepping away from the wall and forcing Adrian to back up. “You forgot that before I married into this nightmare, I spent five years working as a senior financial crimes auditor for the Securities and Exchange Commission, tracking offshore corporate embezzlement.”
Elaine let out a short, high-pitched shriek of absolute horror.
“I didn’t just survive the starvation you put me through,” Lena stated, her eyes burning with a cold, terrifying, intellectual fire. “I audited it.”
Adrian stepped back as if he had been physically struck by a baseball bat. His eyes darted frantically from the hard drive in her hand to the massive security guards blocking the door. The realization of his colossal, fatal miscalculation crashed over him. He hadn’t trapped a helpless victim in poverty; he had handed the keys to his financial crimes directly to a federal investigator.
He lunged forward, desperation fueling his movements, attempting to snatch the hard drive from her hands to destroy the evidence.
But before his fingers could even brush the plastic casing, the loud, aggressive screech of multiple luxury SUV tires tearing up the wet gravel driveway outside echoed through the rain.
The heavy oak doors were pulled open by security.
Five men and women in sharp, dark suits carrying heavy metal briefcases marched into the foyer, shaking the rain from their umbrellas. It was Mercer, Vale, and Roth—the most ruthless, feared, and devastatingly thorough corporate legal and forensic accounting team in the city.
Victor Holloway stood up from his leather chair. He looked at Adrian with an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust.
“The financial slaughter begins now,” Victor announced softly.
